Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rainbow Jello

This is a fairly time-consuming recipe, but it's totally worth it at the end, especially if you have kids. You can do this in rainbow colors, or customize colors to your event -- red and green for Christmas; orange and yellow for Thanksgiving; green, yellow and purple for Mardi Gras; purple and yellow for LSU tailgating. I went with rainbow colors today. The store was out of blue jello, so I bought some nasty little kids' squeeze bottles of blue punch, and used one of those with unflavored gelatin for the blue layer. It worked.

You can make this in whatever shape pan you want. Bundt pans make a particularly attractive mold, or you can make it in a square or rectangular pan and then cut it into individual squares for serving.

Brad suggested I make purple and yellow ones with vodka for tailgating next football season! Oh, baby!

Grease a pan with baking spray. Clear out a level spot in the refrigerator. Put the prepared pan in the refrigerator to chill.

Add one packet of Jello to 1 cup of boiling water. Stir 2 to 3 minutes to dissolve completely. Pour 2/3 cup of the Jello into the prepared pan, and chill for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, add enough Cool Whip to the remaining Jello to make 2/3 cup. Stir to completely melt the Cool Whip. When first layer has set for 15 minutes, carefully pour Jello/Cool Whip mixture over it, and chill for 15 minutes. Repeat with remaining colors. Once all layers have been poured, allow to chill for at least 2 hours. Unmold onto a serving platter, if desired, or cut into squares and serve.

Note: The way I did this was to mix up the next color as soon as I poured the first layer of the previous color. For example, as soon as I poured the first layer of yellow jello, I heated up water and mixed up the green jello. Once it was dissolved, I poured 2/3 cup of the green jello into another measuring cup, then stirred in the Cool Whip to the rest of it. You need three measuring cups to do it this way. That gives it some time to cool down a little before it's time to pour it into the pan, but not so much time that it begins to set up too much to pour.

This looks amazing! I can only imagine all the time put into this. I absolutely adore jello! This reminds me of when my dad used to layer jello in clear glasses for me when I was younger and it was such a fun treat!

The many-layered alcoholic jello mold was a regular fixture at our tailgating parties back in school, so I can vouch for how awesome this would be decked out in school colors with a secret ingredient or two!

Wow! I just came across this while I was searching for some nice rainbow Jell-o! Can you tell me about how much Cool Whip you used? I just don't want to have to run to the store suddenly if I don't have too :-) I can't wait to try my own - thanks for the walkthrough!

Sorry it took me so long to comment back. I was out of town most of the past week.

The amount of cool whip, etc. you stir in is up to you. I think I added about 1/4 cup to each color, perhaps a bit more. You really can't mess it up. The more you add, the paler the color will be and the more contrast you'll have between layers.

As for the cooking spray, I guess it's not necessary, but it does make the jello release much more easily.

Thank you for all your responses and your help! I did do a trial run of it the other day, and you're right! It's so easy and very difficult to mess up! Even though I saw alot of other recipes that featured Rainbow Jello I would like to give you the credit for the nice walkthrough. Would it be possible for me to add your link into my blog? I won't be writing up the recipe on my blog for a few more days, as I intend to make rainbow jello with pastel colors (more cool whip) for Easter! Wish me luck!

Beautiful blog! I've been searching for ideas for a rainbow themed birthday party, and I may just have to make this! May I please use one of the photos from this post as part of an inspiration board I'll be posting on my blog, www.glorioustreats.blogspot.comOf course I'll clearly link back to you. Please respond when you can. Thanks!

Yes, please! By all means feel free to use the images and link to me. This is such a fun recipe, and I'm thrilled to know that you'll be using it for a rainbow birthday party. Do me a favor and send me the link when you do. I'd love to see pictures!

Recipe Index

What's with the "food slut" title?

Simple. I was initially going to go with "food whore" until Brad pointed out that "whores do it for the money, but sluts do it because they like it". Awesome.

Food slut, tell us about yourself!

How kind of you to ask!

I'm Cheryl, and I'm a food slut. I love food. I love cooking it, eating it, photographing it, staring at it, writing about it and reading about it. Cookbooks are one of my favorite things to read, and I'm known to scatter them around the house so I always have one to browse through, regardless of where I am. There are few things I find more enjoyable than ambling through a grocery store (particularly gourmet shops, or those in foreign countries) and checking out the products. I'm a slut, all right!

Besides being a food slut, I'm also a wife and mom. I'm 33years old, and have been married seven years to Brad, a man who loves food as much as I do. We have two fabulous little girls who love to help out in the kitchen. I've lived in Washington state (18 years, broken up into chunks of time here and there), California(3 years), Spain(7 years), Japan(4 years), Louisiana (1 year), and just recently moved to central New York, which I've already fallen deeply in love with.

This blog serves as a place for me to share my recipes with others, to make notes about different things I cook, and also as a means for me to corral all of my recipes in one place for easy reference.